Month: June 2013

I was hoping to have finished Vogue 1247 by now. I am in the home stretch, but stretch is the optimal word. Last minute impatience had me rushing to finish the sleeve cuffs and hem, this has led to some wonky and ripply edges. I’m taking a break to return when Little Miss Impatient is asleep (er, that’s my brain, not an actual child or anything…).

In the mean-time, I’ve been dreaming of the next items in my wardrobe challenge. Which is probably part of the problem described above, so I know I shouldn’t, but, well, I can’t help it…

From somewhere I seem to have become obsessed with tops and skirts masquerading as dresses. I first became aware of this phenomenon from vintage patterns, where things I would call a two-piece seem to be called a dress.

(And, conversely, according to Claire Shaeffer, Chanel would oft-times sew a shell top to a skirt in order to make the skirt hang better. This wasn’t meant to be seen as a dress, so seemingly was still called a skirt. Who knew you could play so fast and loose with the terminology?)

You would think this is dress. Fooled again! It’s a skirt/top. I wanted to make that skirt/top so badly. I think it was about that time that a small neuron stuck up its dendrite and suggested ever so quietly that, even better, if I made two, I could mix and match them, the skirt from one with the top from the other. Might I still do that? Well, maybe… there’s a piece of black hound’s tooth that’s got peplum written all over it. But the turqoise linen is getting made up into a two piece peplum. right. now.

So to meet the requirements of the challenge without looking like a great big peplum weirdo, my plan is to take one of the other fabrics and make both a skirt, which can also be matched with the peplum, and a second top of a different design. That way all four items will co-ordinate with each other, but I still get to indulge in the skirt/top masquerade gimmick, and I’ll have two different looks. I know!

However, (and it’s always more complicated when my brain gets involved), back to the actual Burda pattern, I decided, after reading Fehr Trade‘s review, that I would want to swap the bodice for something else. Various plans ensued: redraft the supplied bodice by manipulating the waist dart into a princess seam; use the top half of the wiggle-dress from Gertie’s Book for Better Sewing; oh, wait, what’s that weird non-pattern at the start of Pattern Magic 2?

Pattern Magic: ‘Basic Lesson’

So, without further ado here are my initial designs for the turquoise linen/silk blend and African wax fabrics.

Mix and match

I’ve tried to find an on-line example of someone making this, but it seems that most people did what I did initially and skipped over it. The only reference I can find to making this top is in a post, again by Fehr Trade, describing a course she took at Morley College. They’re doing another one this year, look.

So you’ll just have to look at my grainy photo and the shaping lines in my design illustration, until I show my pattern.

This also ticks off one of my challenge aims: using some instructions from the Pattern Magic books.

I’m getting excited about sewing my peplum a year after the trend hit, although, there are some who are, apparently, ‘over’ it already! I don’t care!

Related articles

I’ve been getting on with the first two items in my Spring/Summer 2013 wardrobe challenge. The Colette Clovers are done (and have been worn out and about) and I am half way through the Vogue top. I’m saving a reveal till I can photograph the two of them together, but here’s a teaser.

Top front constructed

Sewing a version of this top in blue silk had two purposes: a muslin before cutting into the patterned chiffon, and my first experience of sewing with light-weight silk satin. Some sort of drapey silk is a current wedding-frock contender and so I wanted to see how it handled and whether I could handle it before I got too far along in my plans.

As this pattern is for an unstructured top I didn’t need any complicated backing or control, so I focussed on learning how to cut, sew and press silk.

Cutting: I used the Grainline tutorial for cutting the silk, that is cutting it through paper, and I think, on the whole it worked. I haven’t got a very big cutting surface and I don’t like crawling around on the floor, so I handily recalled a tip from Roberta Carr’s Couture book. She advises you to cut with the smallest piece of fabric you can get away with. I happily ripped away at my fabric to give me strips that would fit on my table and then sandwiched them between paper, using the edges of my paper as my grain lines. The one thing I found tricky was inserting the pins; the weight of the three layers, and stiffness of the paper, meant that I couldn’t bring the pins back up through the sandwich easily. The combination of these two methods is very profligate with materials. As a recycler, I’m not sure what I think about this, yet.

After cutting out the first back piece, I hastily pulled out the pins to see my results. Whilst, happy with the piece itself, I realised how badly the fabric frayed and so I left subsequent pieces sandwiched in their paper until I needed them. I think this stopped both wrinkling and fraying.

Fabric sandwich, hold the mayo

Sewing: I read quite extensively before starting sewing but then just went by feel. I used these resources:

Post on silk from Male Pattern Boldness; the comments for this post contain a multitude of tips

I set the machine up with the smallest needle I had, following Claire’s advice. The pattern calls for french seams, which I sewed on the 2.5 setting.

My seams still slipped a little (Seam Slippage) and; I now have two pieces of conflicting advice, Claire suggested a ‘normal’ stitch length would be fine, but the link above suggests the opposite to avoid slippage. In any case, don’t think this will be noticeable in the final garment as it has a loose fit and wont be pulled tight.

I didn’t use any stabilisers; the way the pattern called for the neck to be finished was almost a stabiliser in itself:

Bias edging

That is, a bias band stitched to the right side, pressed under and then top stitched. The second row you see there is understitching. It remains to be seen whether I should have stabilised the lower front panels when I try to stitch them to the upper front.

I think I’m going to need to sew a more structured garment to really improve my abilities with this fabric.

Pressing: Again my source material was the two couture books. I wanted to press with a cloth to protect the fabric, but found it really tricky getting the seam in position under it. I really worked on my technique, eventually realising that I needed to hold the seam down with my fingers, place the cloth over the top and then press, rather than holding the fabric from above the cloth.

Wavey

Holding the seam in place

Close up

Getting flatter

Unfortunately this fabric was VERY unforgiving when pressing. The small amounts of steam I dared to use have given a bubbly look to bits of the fabric and I’ve got seam impressions on the right side, as you can see from the picture on the left.

Flat, but not flat-felled

The paper method

I also tried putting paper between the seam and body of the top, as suggested by Roberta, but by then I’d pressed the seams so many times, the results of this method weren’t clear.

Next time, I will try both paper and using less pressure, possibly not even touching the fabric, just using the heat. I picked that up from Ann in the Great British Sewing Bee.

I’m going to delve back into previous makes and blog them for posterity! First up, a Burda Magazine dress I made for our annual jaunt to the Decanter Fine Wine Encounter, where I encountered a LOT of wine.

Behind

You’re so funny

Shoulders back, chest out, tummy in…

Pattern: Dress 111, September 2009 edition of Burda Magazine.

Made/occasion: Made in Oct/Nov 2012 for special occasion (see above)

Alterations/Fitting: No design alterations apart from fully lining the dress. Fitted well, apart from at hips. Decreased hips by inch or two (this is a normal adjustment for me as my hips are narrower than the pattern models used).

Fabric: Not sure of the fiber content. Structure is taffetta like. Main colour is black with small woven grey diamonds at intervals, and there is a woven boarder of antique gold, copper and pewter flowers. My biggest mistake was pre-washing this fabric. The fabric didn’t shrink, but there are now distortions in the weave which show up as grey crease marks. No amount of pressing gets rid of these babies (but I might try sending it for dry cleaning to see what happens).

Pattern instructions: They were typically minimally Burda-y. I.e. you could follow them, but they’re not giving you any extra. HOWEVER, there is a mysterious ‘lining’ piece that I didn’t figure out until half way through the muslin stage. Why, oh why, I thought, is there only one lining piece? Well, it isn’t a lining piece, that’s why. This dress is unlined as drafted in the magazine. No! The ‘lining’ piece is actually an internal structure keeping the two princess side pieces where they’re supposed to be. Absence of this piece means the front and back pleats are free to pull open. As I wasn’t lining my muslin I omitted this piece at the fitting stage only to hastily stitch it in as my pleats went flapping around all over the place. In the finished piece I used silk organza for the, ahem, structural lining.

The mysterious ‘lining’

My construction notes/ thoughts: I picked this dress because I really wanted to showcase the border weave on this fabric. Most of the fabric is boring black and I didn’t want to just have the border around the skirt hem. Therefore I pieced the dress using the border in the central front and back pieces (upside down), and in the cap sleeves as well as round the skirt. I deliberately pieced the cap sleeves differently so that I didn’t have two bold flowers staring at you from my shoulders. I like the way the fabric placing highlights the face and decolletage.

I lined the dress by using the drafted pattern pieces, but cutting and sewing the bodice pieces at the pleat overlap lines, so the lining is smooth (this will make sense if you look at the pattern pieces). Instead of constructing the cap sleeves as full circles, folded in half and basted before setting in, as drafted, I cut a half circle from the shell fabric and one from the lining, hemming them at the long straight edge before setting them in as per the instructions. I hand-picked the lining at the neck and round the armholes.

Back detail

Fabric weave up close

Front panel detail

Recommend/make again?: This is quite an elegant dress. It is also unusual with the front and back pleating, and I like the way the pleat matches up with the skirt pleats to look like a continuous fold when wearing a belt (when not, you can see the waist seam). This is quite a sophisticated design element for Burda, I think. I’ll leave you to decide if you can cope with the extra fabric over the boob area. I was concerned before-hand, but decided it’s not too much for me.

I would make this again. I like the style, but the fabric means I won’t be wearing this unless for best. A nice, red, woolen version would be smart for work, I think.

My first Encounter of the day

WordPress likes to offer me related content when writing posts. Here’s one to help you matching those lovely pleats on the front of the Burda dress. Making sure they line up means you can take advantage of this sophisticated style element